The Classify Education Newsletter #4

Welcome to the third edition of The Classify Education Newsletter. It’s been a busy month with lots of exciting things happening

What we cover

• Classify updates

• Leadership reflection

• The data drop

• Teaching & learning tip

• Five things we enjoyed this month

• Learn more about Classify

Want to take a look at Classify Education? Click the button below to take get a guided walkthrough of our prototype dashboard👇

Classify updates

• We are proud to announce our early adopter programme - AlphaWave for the next academic year. If you are a school in the UAE and would like to find out more about partnering with us email [email protected] or reply to this email.

• Development is almost complete and the platform is looking great. We can’t wait for educators to start using it and getting the most from it.

• The Learning Curve School Leadership Podcast continues and we have released two episodes over the last month which you can find here. Episode #5 was Nick Hart and episode #6 with Same Crome. Both guests wee unbelievable and it was so insightful speaking to them, make sure you have your notepads ready when listening!

Leadership reflection

Reflection: Naturally Term 3.2 is full of reflection and beginning to make preparations for the next academic year.

When revisiting some of my kindle highlights, this quote really stood out to me and had me thinking about times in the year when I’d been quite reactive to problems. At the time, I put all my effort into solving the issues and never really stopped to think why it had occurred in the first place.

It is easy to move from problem to problem, or deal with the same problem over and over without stopping to think deeper and explore the root cause - the upstream issue. However, if we do, we may well find the issue is something we won’t have to deal with again.

This particularly made me think of periods in the year where staff were quite overwhelmed and had a lot on. As a leader, I tried to react to support as best as I could, but the real value would have been to explore those pinch points in the year and ensure work was spread out to reduce bottlenecks and staff feeling overwhelmed.

Thinking upstream can be hard and requires more consideration, input and time but the upside can be huge to our teams.

The data drop

Pearson have just launched their Pearson School Report for 2024 which has taken opinions from over 12,000 educators, students and voice from the education sector. The report is carried out in the UK and therefore all data reflects the state of education in the United Kingdom and not necessarily worldwide.

As a company which focuses on assessment analysis, naturally we were drawn towards some of the findings on assessment but we recommend checking out the full report which you can find here.

A general trend throughout the report was focus on more digital resources and devices so it is not surprise to see that reflected in assessment too. The desire to see more digital assessments is interest but naturally poses challenges especially around invigilation but also question design.

It is surprising to find that teacher appetite for choice is a little lower, especially given the fact that digital assessment could reduce workload quite notably.

An assessment ‘when ready’ model is a very left-field approach but one that could support student confidence and outlook when it came to exams. Challenges would arise however for example, students could become out of sync with classmates either advancing or stalling or bottlenecks could appear with multiple assessments needing to be completed.

Finally, the option to sit exams at home is an interesting concept, especially as it could support with exam anxiety however, realistically, would be very challenging to invigilate and very hard to standardise.

Again, we highly recommend checking our the Pearson School Report 202. It is full of great insights and is very thought provoking.

Teaching & learning tip

Variation Practice

Variation practice is when children work through a set of examples or questions where only 1 thing is changed from question to question.

The idea of changing only 1 thing means that teachers are able to manage the cognitive load for students or are able to guide students through certain examples.

For example look at the following maths questions:

3 × 5 + 2 = 17
3 × 4 + 2 = 14
4 × 3 + 2 = 14
4 + 2 × 2 = 8

In this question set, which I would use in a lesson on on order of operations, you can see that each new question has changed in only 1 way. The questions, on the surface, appear very simple but paired with some reflection, can be used to stretch and deepen student understanding.

Example set with reflection prompts:

3 × 5 + 2 = 17

—What changed? Will the next answer be higher or lower? Why?
3 × 4 + 2 = 14

How will switching the 3 and 4 impact the answer? Why?
4 × 3 + 2 = 14

-What changed? How does the position of the ‘x’ change the question ? Why?
4 + 3 × 2 = 10

This is just a basic example but using variation theory in task design can allow for smart differentiation where challenge can be scaled up, or down, by using prompts and reflection on question structure.

Variation practice can also be a really good way to give students a surprising answer in a set of questions, which can support with focus and longer term retention.

Find out more about variation theory by checking out the amazing work done by Craig Barton here.

Five things we enjoyed this month

1. Responsive Coaching - Josh Goodrich 📖

2. Outsmart Your Brain - Dan Willingham 📖

3. Effective Team Bonding: Moving Beyond Fun Activites - The Coaching Culture 🎙️ 

4. The Key to Effective Teacher Development - Thinking Deeply About Primary Education🎙️

5. The Purpose of a System is What it Does - David Didau 🖥️

Learn more about Classify

I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Classify Education Newsletter and you found some value in it. Please share with your colleagues and keep your eyes peeled for more from Classify over the next month. If you have any feedback for us about the newsletter, please get in touch by replying to this email.

Myself & the development team are working hard on the Classify platform at the moment but we are looking for partner schools for AlphaWave - our early adopter programme. If you would like to find our more get in touch using the button below👇